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cpufreq: User/admin documentation update and consolidation

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The user/admin documentation of cpufreq is badly outdated.  It
conains stale and/or inaccurate information along with things
that are not particularly useful.  Also, some of the important
pieces are missing from it.

For this reason, add a new user/admin document for cpufreq
containing current information to admin-guide and drop the old
outdated .txt documents it is replacing.

Since there will be more PM documents in admin-guide going forward,
create a separate directory for them and put the cpufreq document
in there right away.

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Acked-by: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
This commit is contained in:
Rafael J. Wysocki
2017-03-13 23:59:57 +01:00
committed by Jonathan Corbet
parent 8fa1bb506f
commit 2a0e492798
7 changed files with 716 additions and 629 deletions
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93
Documentation/cpu-freq/boost.txt
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Processor boosting control
- information for users -
Quick guide for the impatient:
--------------------
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost
controls the boost setting for the whole system. You can read and write
that file with either "0" (boosting disabled) or "1" (boosting allowed).
Reading or writing 1 does not mean that the system is boosting at this
very moment, but only that the CPU _may_ raise the frequency at it's
discretion.
--------------------
Introduction
-------------
Some CPUs support a functionality to raise the operating frequency of
some cores in a multi-core package if certain conditions apply, mostly
if the whole chip is not fully utilized and below it's intended thermal
budget. The decision about boost disable/enable is made either at hardware
(e.g. x86) or software (e.g ARM).
On Intel CPUs this is called "Turbo Boost", AMD calls it "Turbo-Core",
in technical documentation "Core performance boost". In Linux we use
the term "boost" for convenience.
Rationale for disable switch
----------------------------
Though the idea is to just give better performance without any user
intervention, sometimes the need arises to disable this functionality.
Most systems offer a switch in the (BIOS) firmware to disable the
functionality at all, but a more fine-grained and dynamic control would
be desirable:
1. While running benchmarks, reproducible results are important. Since
the boosting functionality depends on the load of the whole package,
single thread performance can vary. By explicitly disabling the boost
functionality at least for the benchmark's run-time the system will run
at a fixed frequency and results are reproducible again.
2. To examine the impact of the boosting functionality it is helpful
to do tests with and without boosting.
3. Boosting means overclocking the processor, though under controlled
conditions. By raising the frequency and the voltage the processor
will consume more power than without the boosting, which may be
undesirable for instance for mobile users. Disabling boosting may
save power here, though this depends on the workload.
User controlled switch
----------------------
To allow the user to toggle the boosting functionality, the cpufreq core
driver exports a sysfs knob to enable or disable it. There is a file:
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost
which can either read "0" (boosting disabled) or "1" (boosting enabled).
The file is exported only when cpufreq driver supports boosting.
Explicitly changing the permissions and writing to that file anyway will
return EINVAL.
On supported CPUs one can write either a "0" or a "1" into this file.
This will either disable the boost functionality on all cores in the
whole system (0) or will allow the software or hardware to boost at will
(1).
Writing a "1" does not explicitly boost the system, but just allows the
CPU to boost at their discretion. Some implementations take external
factors like the chip's temperature into account, so boosting once does
not necessarily mean that it will occur every time even using the exact
same software setup.
AMD legacy cpb switch
---------------------
The AMD powernow-k8 driver used to support a very similar switch to
disable or enable the "Core Performance Boost" feature of some AMD CPUs.
This switch was instantiated in each CPU's cpufreq directory
(/sys/devices/system/cpu[0-9]*/cpufreq) and was called "cpb".
Though the per CPU existence hints at a more fine grained control, the
actual implementation only supported a system-global switch semantics,
which was simply reflected into each CPU's file. Writing a 0 or 1 into it
would pull the other CPUs to the same state.
For compatibility reasons this file and its behavior is still supported
on AMD CPUs, though it is now protected by a config switch
(X86_ACPI_CPUFREQ_CPB). On Intel CPUs this file will never be created,
even with the config option set.
This functionality is considered legacy and will be removed in some future
kernel version.
More fine grained boosting control
----------------------------------
Technically it is possible to switch the boosting functionality at least
on a per package basis, for some CPUs even per core. Currently the driver
does not support it, but this may be implemented in the future.

301
Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
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CPU frequency and voltage scaling code in the Linux(TM) kernel
L i n u x C P U F r e q
C P U F r e q G o v e r n o r s
- information for users and developers -
Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
some additions and corrections by Nico Golde <nico@ngolde.de>
Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Clock scaling allows you to change the clock speed of the CPUs on the
fly. This is a nice method to save battery power, because the lower
the clock speed, the less power the CPU consumes.
Contents:
---------
1. What is a CPUFreq Governor?
2. Governors In the Linux Kernel
2.1 Performance
2.2 Powersave
2.3 Userspace
2.4 Ondemand
2.5 Conservative
2.6 Schedutil
3. The Governor Interface in the CPUfreq Core
4. References
1. What Is A CPUFreq Governor?
==============================
Most cpufreq drivers (except the intel_pstate and longrun) or even most
cpu frequency scaling algorithms only allow the CPU frequency to be set
to predefined fixed values. In order to offer dynamic frequency
scaling, the cpufreq core must be able to tell these drivers of a
"target frequency". So these specific drivers will be transformed to
offer a "->target/target_index/fast_switch()" call instead of the
"->setpolicy()" call. For set_policy drivers, all stays the same,
though.
How to decide what frequency within the CPUfreq policy should be used?
That's done using "cpufreq governors".
Basically, it's the following flow graph:
CPU can be set to switch independently | CPU can only be set
within specific "limits" | to specific frequencies
"CPUfreq policy"
consists of frequency limits (policy->{min,max})
and CPUfreq governor to be used
/ \
/ \
/ the cpufreq governor decides
/ (dynamically or statically)
/ what target_freq to set within
/ the limits of policy->{min,max}
/ \
/ \
Using the ->setpolicy call, Using the ->target/target_index/fast_switch call,
the limits and the the frequency closest
"policy" is set. to target_freq is set.
It is assured that it
is within policy->{min,max}
2. Governors In the Linux Kernel
================================
2.1 Performance
---------------
The CPUfreq governor "performance" sets the CPU statically to the
highest frequency within the borders of scaling_min_freq and
scaling_max_freq.
2.2 Powersave
-------------
The CPUfreq governor "powersave" sets the CPU statically to the
lowest frequency within the borders of scaling_min_freq and
scaling_max_freq.
2.3 Userspace
-------------
The CPUfreq governor "userspace" allows the user, or any userspace
program running with UID "root", to set the CPU to a specific frequency
by making a sysfs file "scaling_setspeed" available in the CPU-device
directory.
2.4 Ondemand
------------
The CPUfreq governor "ondemand" sets the CPU frequency depending on the
current system load. Load estimation is triggered by the scheduler
through the update_util_data->func hook; when triggered, cpufreq checks
the CPU-usage statistics over the last period and the governor sets the
CPU accordingly. The CPU must have the capability to switch the
frequency very quickly.
Sysfs files:
* sampling_rate:
Measured in uS (10^-6 seconds), this is how often you want the kernel
to look at the CPU usage and to make decisions on what to do about the
frequency. Typically this is set to values of around '10000' or more.
It's default value is (cmp. with users-guide.txt): transition_latency
* 1000. Be aware that transition latency is in ns and sampling_rate
is in us, so you get the same sysfs value by default. Sampling rate
should always get adjusted considering the transition latency to set
the sampling rate 750 times as high as the transition latency in the
bash (as said, 1000 is default), do:
$ echo `$(($(cat cpuinfo_transition_latency) * 750 / 1000)) > ondemand/sampling_rate
* sampling_rate_min:
The sampling rate is limited by the HW transition latency:
transition_latency * 100
Or by kernel restrictions:
- If CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON is set, the limit is 10ms fixed.
- If CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON is not set or nohz=off boot parameter is
used, the limits depend on the CONFIG_HZ option:
HZ=1000: min=20000us (20ms)
HZ=250: min=80000us (80ms)
HZ=100: min=200000us (200ms)
The highest value of kernel and HW latency restrictions is shown and
used as the minimum sampling rate.
* up_threshold:
This defines what the average CPU usage between the samplings of
'sampling_rate' needs to be for the kernel to make a decision on
whether it should increase the frequency. For example when it is set
to its default value of '95' it means that between the checking
intervals the CPU needs to be on average more than 95% in use to then
decide that the CPU frequency needs to be increased.
* ignore_nice_load:
This parameter takes a value of '0' or '1'. When set to '0' (its
default), all processes are counted towards the 'cpu utilisation'
value. When set to '1', the processes that are run with a 'nice'
value will not count (and thus be ignored) in the overall usage
calculation. This is useful if you are running a CPU intensive
calculation on your laptop that you do not care how long it takes to
complete as you can 'nice' it and prevent it from taking part in the
deciding process of whether to increase your CPU frequency.
* sampling_down_factor:
This parameter controls the rate at which the kernel makes a decision
on when to decrease the frequency while running at top speed. When set
to 1 (the default) decisions to reevaluate load are made at the same
interval regardless of current clock speed. But when set to greater
than 1 (e.g. 100) it acts as a multiplier for the scheduling interval
for reevaluating load when the CPU is at its top speed due to high
load. This improves performance by reducing the overhead of load
evaluation and helping the CPU stay at its top speed when truly busy,
rather than shifting back and forth in speed. This tunable has no
effect on behavior at lower speeds/lower CPU loads.
* powersave_bias:
This parameter takes a value between 0 to 1000. It defines the
percentage (times 10) value of the target frequency that will be
shaved off of the target. For example, when set to 100 -- 10%, when
ondemand governor would have targeted 1000 MHz, it will target
1000 MHz - (10% of 1000 MHz) = 900 MHz instead. This is set to 0
(disabled) by default.
When AMD frequency sensitivity powersave bias driver --
drivers/cpufreq/amd_freq_sensitivity.c is loaded, this parameter
defines the workload frequency sensitivity threshold in which a lower
frequency is chosen instead of ondemand governor's original target.
The frequency sensitivity is a hardware reported (on AMD Family 16h
Processors and above) value between 0 to 100% that tells software how
the performance of the workload running on a CPU will change when
frequency changes. A workload with sensitivity of 0% (memory/IO-bound)
will not perform any better on higher core frequency, whereas a
workload with sensitivity of 100% (CPU-bound) will perform better
higher the frequency. When the driver is loaded, this is set to 400 by
default -- for CPUs running workloads with sensitivity value below
40%, a lower frequency is chosen. Unloading the driver or writing 0
will disable this feature.
2.5 Conservative
----------------
The CPUfreq governor "conservative", much like the "ondemand"
governor, sets the CPU frequency depending on the current usage. It
differs in behaviour in that it gracefully increases and decreases the
CPU speed rather than jumping to max speed the moment there is any load
on the CPU. This behaviour is more suitable in a battery powered
environment. The governor is tweaked in the same manner as the
"ondemand" governor through sysfs with the addition of:
* freq_step:
This describes what percentage steps the cpu freq should be increased
and decreased smoothly by. By default the cpu frequency will increase
in 5% chunks of your maximum cpu frequency. You can change this value
to anywhere between 0 and 100 where '0' will effectively lock your CPU
at a speed regardless of its load whilst '100' will, in theory, make
it behave identically to the "ondemand" governor.
* down_threshold:
Same as the 'up_threshold' found for the "ondemand" governor but for
the opposite direction. For example when set to its default value of
'20' it means that if the CPU usage needs to be below 20% between
samples to have the frequency decreased.
* sampling_down_factor:
Similar functionality as in "ondemand" governor. But in
"conservative", it controls the rate at which the kernel makes a
decision on when to decrease the frequency while running in any speed.
Load for frequency increase is still evaluated every sampling rate.
2.6 Schedutil
-------------
The "schedutil" governor aims at better integration with the Linux
kernel scheduler. Load estimation is achieved through the scheduler's
Per-Entity Load Tracking (PELT) mechanism, which also provides
information about the recent load [1]. This governor currently does
load based DVFS only for tasks managed by CFS. RT and DL scheduler tasks
are always run at the highest frequency. Unlike all the other
governors, the code is located under the kernel/sched/ directory.
Sysfs files:
* rate_limit_us:
This contains a value in microseconds. The governor waits for
rate_limit_us time before reevaluating the load again, after it has
evaluated the load once.
For an in-depth comparison with the other governors refer to [2].
3. The Governor Interface in the CPUfreq Core
=============================================
A new governor must register itself with the CPUfreq core using
"cpufreq_register_governor". The struct cpufreq_governor, which has to
be passed to that function, must contain the following values:
governor->name - A unique name for this governor.
governor->owner - .THIS_MODULE for the governor module (if appropriate).
plus a set of hooks to the functions implementing the governor's logic.
The CPUfreq governor may call the CPU processor driver using one of
these two functions:
int cpufreq_driver_target(struct cpufreq_policy *policy,
unsigned int target_freq,
unsigned int relation);
int __cpufreq_driver_target(struct cpufreq_policy *policy,
unsigned int target_freq,
unsigned int relation);
target_freq must be within policy->min and policy->max, of course.
What's the difference between these two functions? When your governor is
in a direct code path of a call to governor callbacks, like
governor->start(), the policy->rwsem is still held in the cpufreq core,
and there's no need to lock it again (in fact, this would cause a
deadlock). So use __cpufreq_driver_target only in these cases. In all
other cases (for example, when there's a "daemonized" function that
wakes up every second), use cpufreq_driver_target to take policy->rwsem
before the command is passed to the cpufreq driver.
4. References
=============
[1] Per-entity load tracking: https://lwn.net/Articles/531853/
[2] Improvements in CPU frequency management: https://lwn.net/Articles/682391/

7
Documentation/cpu-freq/index.txt
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@@ -21,8 +21,6 @@ Documents in this directory:
amd-powernow.txt - AMD powernow driver specific file.
boost.txt - Frequency boosting support.
core.txt - General description of the CPUFreq core and
of CPUFreq notifiers.
@@ -32,17 +30,12 @@ cpufreq-nforce2.txt - nVidia nForce2 platform specific file.
cpufreq-stats.txt - General description of sysfs cpufreq stats.
governors.txt - What are cpufreq governors and how to
implement them?
index.txt - File index, Mailing list and Links (this document)
intel-pstate.txt - Intel pstate cpufreq driver specific file.
pcc-cpufreq.txt - PCC cpufreq driver specific file.
user-guide.txt - User Guide to CPUFreq
Mailing List
------------

228
Documentation/cpu-freq/user-guide.txt
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CPU frequency and voltage scaling code in the Linux(TM) kernel
L i n u x C P U F r e q
U S E R G U I D E
Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
Clock scaling allows you to change the clock speed of the CPUs on the
fly. This is a nice method to save battery power, because the lower
the clock speed, the less power the CPU consumes.
Contents:
---------
1. Supported Architectures and Processors
1.1 ARM and ARM64
1.2 x86
1.3 sparc64
1.4 ppc
1.5 SuperH
1.6 Blackfin
2. "Policy" / "Governor"?
2.1 Policy
2.2 Governor
3. How to change the CPU cpufreq policy and/or speed
3.1 Preferred interface: sysfs
1. Supported Architectures and Processors
=========================================
1.1 ARM and ARM64
-----------------
Almost all ARM and ARM64 platforms support CPU frequency scaling.
1.2 x86
-------
The following processors for the x86 architecture are supported by cpufreq:
AMD Elan - SC400, SC410
AMD mobile K6-2+
AMD mobile K6-3+
AMD mobile Duron
AMD mobile Athlon
AMD Opteron
AMD Athlon 64
Cyrix Media GXm
Intel mobile PIII and Intel mobile PIII-M on certain chipsets
Intel Pentium 4, Intel Xeon
Intel Pentium M (Centrino)
National Semiconductors Geode GX
Transmeta Crusoe
Transmeta Efficeon
VIA Cyrix 3 / C3
various processors on some ACPI 2.0-compatible systems [*]
And many more
[*] Only if "ACPI Processor Performance States" are available
to the ACPI<->BIOS interface.
1.3 sparc64
-----------
The following processors for the sparc64 architecture are supported by
cpufreq:
UltraSPARC-III
1.4 ppc
-------
Several "PowerBook" and "iBook2" notebooks are supported.
The following POWER processors are supported in powernv mode:
POWER8
POWER9
1.5 SuperH
----------
All SuperH processors supporting rate rounding through the clock
framework are supported by cpufreq.
1.6 Blackfin
------------
The following Blackfin processors are supported by cpufreq:
BF522, BF523, BF524, BF525, BF526, BF527, Rev 0.1 or higher
BF531, BF532, BF533, Rev 0.3 or higher
BF534, BF536, BF537, Rev 0.2 or higher
BF561, Rev 0.3 or higher
BF542, BF544, BF547, BF548, BF549, Rev 0.1 or higher
2. "Policy" / "Governor" ?
==========================
Some CPU frequency scaling-capable processor switch between various
frequencies and operating voltages "on the fly" without any kernel or
user involvement. This guarantees very fast switching to a frequency
which is high enough to serve the user's needs, but low enough to save
power.
2.1 Policy
----------
On these systems, all you can do is select the lower and upper
frequency limit as well as whether you want more aggressive
power-saving or more instantly available processing power.
2.2 Governor
------------
On all other cpufreq implementations, these boundaries still need to
be set. Then, a "governor" must be selected. Such a "governor" decides
what speed the processor shall run within the boundaries. One such
"governor" is the "userspace" governor. This one allows the user - or
a yet-to-implement userspace program - to decide what specific speed
the processor shall run at.
3. How to change the CPU cpufreq policy and/or speed
====================================================
3.1 Preferred Interface: sysfs
------------------------------
The preferred interface is located in the sysfs filesystem. If you
mounted it at /sys, the cpufreq interface is located in a subdirectory
"cpufreq" within the cpu-device directory
(e.g. /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ for the first CPU).
affected_cpus : List of Online CPUs that require software
coordination of frequency.
cpuinfo_cur_freq : Current frequency of the CPU as obtained from
the hardware, in KHz. This is the frequency
the CPU actually runs at.
cpuinfo_min_freq : this file shows the minimum operating
frequency the processor can run at(in kHz)
cpuinfo_max_freq : this file shows the maximum operating
frequency the processor can run at(in kHz)
cpuinfo_transition_latency The time it takes on this CPU to
switch between two frequencies in nano
seconds. If unknown or known to be
that high that the driver does not
work with the ondemand governor, -1
(CPUFREQ_ETERNAL) will be returned.
Using this information can be useful
to choose an appropriate polling
frequency for a kernel governor or
userspace daemon. Make sure to not
switch the frequency too often
resulting in performance loss.
related_cpus : List of Online + Offline CPUs that need software
coordination of frequency.
scaling_available_frequencies : List of available frequencies, in KHz.
scaling_available_governors : this file shows the CPUfreq governors
available in this kernel. You can see the
currently activated governor in
scaling_cur_freq : Current frequency of the CPU as determined by
the governor and cpufreq core, in KHz. This is
the frequency the kernel thinks the CPU runs
at.
scaling_driver : this file shows what cpufreq driver is
used to set the frequency on this CPU
scaling_governor, and by "echoing" the name of another
governor you can change it. Please note
that some governors won't load - they only
work on some specific architectures or
processors.
scaling_min_freq and
scaling_max_freq show the current "policy limits" (in
kHz). By echoing new values into these
files, you can change these limits.
NOTE: when setting a policy you need to
first set scaling_max_freq, then
scaling_min_freq.
scaling_setspeed This can be read to get the currently programmed
value by the governor. This can be written to
change the current frequency for a group of
CPUs, represented by a policy. This is supported
currently only by the userspace governor.
bios_limit : If the BIOS tells the OS to limit a CPU to
lower frequencies, the user can read out the
maximum available frequency from this file.
This typically can happen through (often not
intended) BIOS settings, restrictions
triggered through a service processor or other
BIOS/HW based implementations.
This does not cover thermal ACPI limitations
which can be detected through the generic
thermal driver.
If you have selected the "userspace" governor which allows you to
set the CPU operating frequency to a specific value, you can read out
the current frequency in
scaling_setspeed. By "echoing" a new frequency into this
you can change the speed of the CPU,
but only within the limits of
scaling_min_freq and scaling_max_freq.